ITK/Open Access Science
Links, sites and information about Open Access publishing.
NIH Policy on Open Access
Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research
Memo from NIH director Dr. Zerhouni regarding the adoption of open access policy. February 3 2005.
Public Library of Science
Directory of Open Access Journals
Study on the Impact of Open Acccess Journals
Economic Viability and Business Models
Economics of Open Acccess Journals
Sound mathematical analysis of the variables involved in the economics of publishing
http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~mm284/OA.pdf
An Economic Analysis of Scientific Research Publishing
Report from the Wellcome Trust
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/
This report provides a comprehensive analysis of an industry that generates some £22 billion annually
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD003181.html http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/assets/wtd003182.pdf
Initiative World Wide
Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm
The following statements of principle were drafted during a one-day meeting held on April 11, 2003 at the headquarters of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The purpose of this document is to stimulate discussion within the biomedical research community on how to proceed, as rapidly as possible, to the widely held goal of providing open access to the primary scientific literature. Our goal was to agree on significant, concrete steps that all relevant parties —the organizations that foster and support scientific research, the scientists that generate the research results, the publishers who facilitate the peer-review and distribution of results of the research, and the scientists, librarians and other who depend on access to this knowledge— can take to promote the rapid and efficient transition to open access publishing.
Budapest Open Access Initiative
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.
Berlin Declaration
Signed at the Conference on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html
Follow-up Conference
http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/
Agreed Recommendation (emphasis added):
In order to implement the Berlin Declaration institutions should:
1. implement a policy to require their researchers to deposit a copy of all their published articles in an open access repository
2. encourage their researchers to publish their research articles in open access journals where a suitable journal exists and provide the support to enable that to happen.
Scotland Declaration
http://scurl.ac.uk/WG/OATS/declaration.htm
‘We believe that the interests of Scotland will be best served by the rapid adoption of open access to scientific and research literature.’
Policy Commitments
- CNRS (France, Centre national de la recherche scientifique) signs the Registry of OA Self-Archiving Policies to register its commitment to implementing the Berlin Declaration.
- Finnish Ministry of Education recommends OA.
- INRIA (the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control) is about to launch an Open Archive dedicated to its scientific publications.
- CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) signs the Registry of OA Self-Archiving Policies to register its commitment to implementing the Berlin Declaration.
Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP)
Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), the peer-reviewed journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), has announced that it is to adopt an Open Access policy. From January 2004 all research articles and news content in the journal will be available online free of charge. "The rationale behind the open access philosophy - that science best benefits society when it's freely and immediately available to all - is just too compelling to ignore," said Kenneth Olden, Director of NIEHS. "As part of the United States government, we felt it important that we take a leadership role in this area. The web affords us a unique opportunity to enhance scientific discourse that we simply could not ignore.
